Patrick Meier has noticed a change in his conversations with humanitarians. An innovator who co-founded UAViators, or, “the humanitarian UAV network,” Meier spent the last decade fighting resistance to new technologies.
Now, “from a discourse about whether we should” use a technology, the debate is “how do we make the most effective use of this,” he told Devex.
Nowhere is this attitude shift more evident than in the use of data in the humanitarian sphere. From real-time crisis information, to donor funding, to intervention effectiveness, the quantity, quality, and breadth of numbers being gathered has mushroomed.
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About the author
Elizabeth Dickinson@dickinsonbeth
Elizabeth Dickinson is a former associate editor at Devex. Based in the Middle East, she has previously served as Gulf correspondent for The National, assistant managing editor at Foreign Policy, and Nigeria correspondent at The Economist. Her writing also appeared in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Politico Magazine, and Newsweek, among others.
